A new publishing company…
It is remarkably easy – and incredibly cheap – to self-publish. There are many routes to this, some of which are described as “joint” publishing and can be somewhat expensive, but I’ve discovered that it is quite possible for anyone with a little technical know-how to publish their work with no help whatsoever.
Personally, I want to choose a route which is economically viable. If, for instance, joint or self publishing is going to cost me around £1000 (or more), then I need to be sure that I can recoup that outlay by selling my books. Because I’m based in the UK and my publishers so far have been based in the USA, it is very expensive for any of my local contacts to purchase books directly from the publisher’s website, because the cost of postage is prohibitive. Local contacts get a much better deal from Amazon UK, where the books are usually discounted immediately they hit the shelves, and postage is either free or minimal. The problem for me is that my royalties from Amazon are around 75p per copy. They are much better from the publisher’s website – but nobody orders from there! Therefore I have to sell well over 1000 books to begin to make any profit at all.
If I self-publish using the very easy templates and software provided free by Amazon, either for Kindle (electronic) publishing, or for CreateSpace (print) publishing, there are virtually no costs, so any books sold produce a profit.
A no-brainer, you might think.
Ah yes, but there are other considerations. Quality needs to be excellent, and here bona-fide publishers come into their own. You need a huge marketing set-up, and again, publishers have this. I’m very glad to have used well-known publishers for my first two novels, Heaven Spent and Babes And Sucklings. I have learned so much about the publishing process and the subsequent marketing, and have been delighted with the quality of both books.
But now I want to branch out on my own, hence I have published Vengeance Lies In Wait electronically for Kindle, by myself, and am awaiting the CreateSpace print proof. I’ve published this under my own imprint of Beasant Books (were you wondering what the B in Janice B. Scott stands for?)
So if you would like to explore the same route but don’t quite have the confidence to attempt it yourself, drop me an email. Beasant Books will be delighted to help you – at a very reasonable cost.
Why not give us a try?
November 4th, 2011 at 1:51 am
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